Is the recognition of the right to possess property, natural, or not? Or, is it just a creature of the law? To answer these questions will take some acquaintance with the political thoughts as expressed by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and more generally, on one's view of the nature of man, a subject on which I have written.6

That people have a right to possess all the property which have come into their hands as the fruit of their labour or through voluntary trade, is, I submit, a natural right.7 This proposition raises the question as to what life was like to pre-civil man. We first turn to Hobbes.